RCAL R.A.R.E. PROJECT

“Regaining Confidence through Acceptance and Love”

I. Abstract

Every year, thousands of mostly marginalized men and women, old and young alike, are released from penitentiaries all over the country.

Many ex-offenders who sincerely wish to change face uphill challenges after their release. Their attempts to lead normal lives are fraught with difficulties caused by the stigma that they inevitably face. Shackled by their criminal records, they are often turned away from job opportunities as soon as their past convictions are revealed.

As they spent most of their prime years in prison and were released already in the twilight of their age, they are mostly weak and sickly.
Away from the free medical benefits of the Bureau of Corrections, they will start to live without available health services support for themselves.
An ex-offender’s predicaments extend beyond himself to affect his family as well. Their families do not only suffer the economic deprivation and emotional strain of losing a bread-winner and care-giver, they also have to cope with the stigma of being closely associated with an ex-convict.
At worst, their own families may no longer be sympathetic to them nor will they still be eager accept them back.
Faced with these predicaments, it is therefore not surprising that a great majority of these return to their bad characters and are re-arrested after a short while.

The 2nd Chances
Rehabilitative and aftercare programmes are the supporting mechanisms to facilitate the reintegration of an individual back to the community and his family. Nevertheless, these efforts alone will not be adequate in the long run. The community plays an important part in helping to create a stable social environment where amenable ex-offenders and their families can feel a sense of belonging and find the hope to start afresh. Hence, there was a need for a concerted and coordinated approach towards creating awareness, generating acceptance and inspiring action within the community to support rehabilitation and reintegration of ex-offenders.

The Yellow Ribbon Project
To achieve this, the Yellow Ribbon Project, originally conceived and successfully implemented in Singapore, will be adopted by RCAL to spread the message of offering forgiveness and second chances towards ex-offenders amongst the community.

The aim is to address the problems encountered by ex-offenders upon their release to help them cope with the challenges they will encounter, and as a result, be successfully integrated back into the community as productive members of society.
The Yellow Ribbon Project seeks to engage the community in giving ex-offenders a second chance at life. It hopes to inspire a ripple effect of concerted community action to support ex-offenders and their families.

“Although they have made a mistake in life, they deserve a second chance. We all make mistakes, we all come out the better for it.”

“Beyond Just Words”

Inspiration

The inspiration for the concept of the Yellow Ribbon Project was derived from a popular song in the 70′s – ‘Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the old Oak Tree’. The song itself was based on a supposedly actual incident in the USA about an ex-offender, who had just been released from prison after serving a 3-year sentence for fraud. He was onboard a bus bound for his hometown in Florida and had explained to the driver that he had a hand written a message to his wife that if she was still willing to accept him back, she could let him know by tying a yellow ribbon around the only oak tree in the city square. As the bus rolled down the road, nearing the man’s hometown of White oak, Georgia, the driver was requested to slow down so that all the passengers on board could see whether the ribbon was in place. To the man’s tearful relief, it was! There were hundreds of yellow ribbons on the tree. The driver pulled over and phoned the press and the news subsequently spread across the country. Songwriters Irwin Levine and L. Russell Brown read it in the newspaper and were inspired to put together their million dollar-selling ballad.

Keys to unlocking the second prison

“I’m really still in prison and my love,

She holds the key,

A simple yellow ribbon‘s what I need to set me free.”

The three lines from the song above aptly describes the ex-offender’s helplessness and need for acceptance and forgiveness from his loved ones and the community to set him free. This is because every offender encounters two prisons. The first is the physical prison and the prison officers hold the key to this first prison. However, it’s a matter of time before their release from this first prison. Once they are released, the ex-offender enters into a second prison, which is the psychological and social imprisonment. The “she” who holds the key to the second prison, refers to the ex-offender’s family, friends, neighbours, employers, colleagues, volunteers, religious groups and the community at large. In other words, everyone holds the key to unlocking the doors of this second prison.

Hence, the simple yellow ribbon was chosen as the iconic symbol of the project with the hope that it would one day become a self sustaining grassroots movement. It also formed an integral part of the design of the signature Wear-A-Yellow-Ribbon activity, where members of the public were encouraged to wear the simple cloth yellow ribbon pin as the show of acceptance and an offer of forgiveness and second chances towards ex-offenders who sincerely wanted to change.

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